V G Baleanu
THE ENEMY WITHIN: THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE
SERVICE IN TRANSITION
January 1995
Conflict Studies Research Centre
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Camberley, Surrey GU15 4PQ
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed are those of the author and not
necessarily those of the UK Ministry of Defence
THE ENEMY WITHIN:THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE IN
TRANSITION
INTRODUCTION
At least nine intelligence services are known to operate
currently in Romania. Both the exact number and
functions of these units, about which the authorities
have made contradictory statements, have become the
object of widespread speculations in the media. Most
analysts tend to see these agencies as successor
organisations of the Securitate, the notorious political
police of the communist era. Official denials of any
connection between the new agencies and their infamous
predecessor have not been able to dispel the suspicion
that they are splinter organisations of the former
Securitate, resuscitated under new names and with
specialized functions.
Although the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) - the
country's main security structure - has attracted a great
deal of public attention over the past five years, the
activity of smaller security services has repeatedly
provoked heated debates in the media, especially since it
appears to be even less subject to parliamentary or other
forms of public controls than that of the SRI. Moreover,
the modus operandi of these parallel services, which
often have overlapping areas of competence, lacks any
transparency.
Among the security units operating under the umbrella of
various ministries and other central institutions are the
Protection and Guard Service of the Presidency; the
Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs (also known under the code name of Military Unit
0215 - UM 0215); the newly established Operative
Surveillance and Intelligence Directorate of the General
Police Inspectorate (subordinated to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs); the Foreign Intelligence Service
(attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs); the
Counter-intelligence Directorate and the Intelligence
Directorate of the Army (the Ministry of National
Defence); an intelligence structure within the General
Directorate of the Penitentiaries (the Ministry of
Justice); and a Special Telecommunications Service, which
claims to be a military body, although it is not
subordinated to the Defence Ministry.
Following the creation of these agencies, allegations and
rumours about the continuing role and influence of the
notorious Securitate, Ceausescu's secret police, have
been a staple of post-December 1989 Romanian political
life. Although the Securitate was officially disbanded
and replaced by the Romanian Intelligence Service and the
other intelligence services in 1990, the newly formed
organisations are operating under the shadow of their
predecessor and this represents one of the main internal
sources of conflict and dangers that could impel Romania
away from a possible liberal and democratic future.
Thus, these institutions have become the enemy within, a
tool in the hands of the neo-communist government which
came to power during the still unclarified events of
December 1989.
Since 1990, waves of changes have been taking place in
the leadership of the Romanian Intelligence
establishment. Although the real reasons for these
changes remain unclear, there are indications that an
internal struggle for power is taking place. Virgil
Magureanu, the head of the SRI - a former intelligence
officer and then a professor of Marxism - spoke of a
process of transition and rejuvenation that was likely to
continue for some time and suggested that it was
affecting primarily former Securitate officers who had
failed to adjust to the new political environment.
THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE - A HISTORY OF DISSENT
AND PURGES
>From the very beginning, SRI was depicted as President
Ion Iliescu's "personal security service". Indeed, the
SRI's "birth certificate", the un-published Decree no 181
of 26 March 1990, stipulated that the new service was to
be directly subordinated to the president, while the
Provisional Council of National Unity, Romania's
surrogate parliament at the time, would have some control
over it. The history of SRI, plagued by dissent and
purges, appears to be rooted in what was described as the
organisation's "original sin", that of being a
continuation under a new name of the communist-era secret
service.
The presence of a considerable number of former
Securitate officers within the SRI ranks is perceived as
the main obstacle to a complete overhaul of the Romanian
intelligence system. Although no official figures are
available and estimates differ widely, in March 1994
Magureanu claimed that "only one-third of the
approximately 15,000 Securitate officers had been offered
employment in the new organisation". But as the real
number of Securitate officers during Ceausescu regime was
estimated in the region of 50,000, it is hard to believe
that the new SRI and the new intelligence services are
not mentally and methodically descended from the old
organisation.
Some younger and more open-minded Securitate officers
hired by the SRI after the first wave of purges added
their voices to those denouncing the continuity in
personnel, material resources, methods, and mentality
between the two institutions. The first major breach in
the secrecy surrounding the new intelligence service was
made by Adrian Ionescu, a former Securitate captain
placed on reserve on 15 October 1990 on Magureanu's
order. Among other things, Ionescu accused Magureanu of
having turned the organisation into a tool of the then
ruling party (the National Salvation Front), despite
pledges that the SRI was an apolitical organization.
A second wave of personnel changes took place in the
secret service between June and August 1991, following
the scandal in May of that year over several tons of
Securitate and SRI secret documents found in a ravine at
Berevoiesti (Prahova County). Dubbed in retrospect "the
big purge", this wave was reported by Magureanu to have
affected some 30% of the SRI's personnel. The purge's
most prominent victim was Magureanu's first deputy
director at the time, Major General Mihai Stan.
Interesting details about the purge were revealed in a
letter addressed to the parliament in April 1992 by a
group of unidentified SRI officers demanding Magureanu's
removal for what they said was a systematic interference
in the country's political life. According to the
authors of the letter, most of the "nearly 1,500
officers" dismissed during this second wave were
professionals who had no connection with the communist
nomenklatura. They added that former party activists in
the Securitate, who held leading positions in the SRI,
had not been affected by the purge. Magureanu responded
angrily to these reactions, speaking of a "demolition
mania" with "incalculable consequences" for the SRI. His
reaction raised the suspicion that the letter contained
reliable information on the service.
In January 1992 another former SRI officer, Colonel Marin
Iancu, decided to speak out against the SRI leadership.
He criticized the similarities of style, methods, and
structure between the SRI and its predecessor and warned
that the former might become another "state within the
state" if the parliament failed to impose a strict
control over it.
Hints about the third wave of changes in the SRI
leadership appeared in the Romanian media at the end of
1993. In January 1994 some of the heads of SRI branches
in the territory were removed. In February, Magureanu
toured the counties of Dolj, Valcea and Gorj to inspect
the SRI branches there and make more personnel changes.
During his visit in Gorj County, where the Jiu Valley -
home of the thousands of miners who ran riot in Bucharest
on two occasions in 1990 and 1991 - is located, Magureanu
appeared with the controversial leader of the miners,
Miron Cosma, at a rally. The director of the SRI urged
thousands of striking miners through a loudspeaker to
remain calm and to renounce the idea of descending again
on Bucharest.
The move was widely attacked in the media as inadmissible
interference by the secret service in public life.
Magureanu was summoned to the joint parliamentary
commission in charge of monitoring the SRI's activities,
which concluded that he had overstepped his authority.
The commission's chairman, Senator Vasile Vacaru of the
ruling Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR), tried
to play down the incident and exonerate Magureanu. After
this incident, the question raised by the democratic
opposition was "who controls who in the parliament?"
In early March 1994, the heads of the SRI's Protection
Division (known as Division E, in charge of protecting
and monitoring SRI cadres and safeguarding state
secrets), were dismissed for having allegedly leaked
confidential information to the ultranationalist weekly
Romania Mare (Greater Romania). In January, Romania Mare
had accused several Romanian officials of working for
foreign intelligence agencies. A few days later, the
head of the SRI counter-intelligence division, Major
General Gheorghe Diaconescu, was also dismissed amid
speculations that he had failed to unmask a spy ring
reported to include Lieutenant General Marin Pancea, the
secretary of the Supreme Council for the Defence of the
Country and an adviser to Iliescu; Pancea also had to
quit his job. All accusations against Pancea, especially
the claim that he had been spying for France, were
dismissed by the Presidency as "pure invention", while
the SRI said more cautiously that it had no evidence
supporting such allegations.
Some journalists later claimed that the true reason for
Diaconescu's dismissal was no doubt related to his rather
imprudent decision to keep tabs on his own chief,
Magureanu. The former counter-intelligence chief, the
press wrote, had thus been able to uncover some illegal
transactions with foreign firms involving Magureanu and
his first deputy director, Major General Victor Marcu.
Diaconescu was replaced by Colonel Mihai Lupu, who had
worked with the Securitate's Foreign Intelligence
Directorate; from 1983; he was the deputy chief of the
special unit UM 0110 responsible for counter-intelligence
operations in connection with the Soviet Union and other
communist countries.
Also in March 1994, one of the SRI's deputy directors and
the head of the organisation's training school, Major
General Dumitru Cristea, was asked to resign for an
alleged love affair with one of his female students.
Cristea, who denied the charge and put the blame for the
campaign against him on senior PDSR officials, refused to
resign. He was subsequently suspended from duty and sent
on vacation pending an examination of his case. Despite
the fact that, as director of the Bucharest-based Higher
Institute of Information, which had been set up in 1992,
Cristea was responsible for the training of SRI officers
and his position was very influential in both the ruling
party and the opposition, he was removed from his post
without a follow-up inquiry.
According to the media, the removal of Diaconescu and
Cristea was accompanied by more changes in the SRI
leadership. Thus, Colonel Constantin Pista, the head of
Division C (responsible for the protection of the
national wealth), had been dismissed for incompetence,
while Colonel Traian Ciceu, the head of Division A
(responsible for the protection of the constitutional
order), handed in his resignation in connection with the
loss of strictly confidential documents on Romania's
political parties and extremist groups.
At the same time, in the spring of 1994, Bucharest was
hit by other security scandals. Thus, a well organised
campaign of innuendos and slander against Gen Spiroiu,
the Minister of Defence, forced his replacement with a
civilian. But soon after the reshuffle, several
newspapers and the opposition demanded an official
investigation into allegations that the new defence
minister, Gheorghe Tinca, had ties with the Securitate.
While these demands were refused, it was acknowledged
that army officers are now aware that they will remain
under strict control by the military counter-intelligence
department of the SRI, introduced in the Army through the
back door.
Another scandal was connected with reports that appeared
in the media alleging that the secret service through its
unit UM 0215 had revived old-style surveillance and
harassment actions against political parties, trade
unions and journalists. Adrian Severin, the
vice-president of the opposition Democratic Party led by
the former prime minister, Petre Roman, claimed that his
party knew about this unit, and he has urged parliament's
defence and security commissions to investigate its
activity and the reports that Gheorghe Tinca had ties
with Ceausescu's Securitate. These scandals have done
little to bolster confidence in the SRI or in the quality
of political debate, which - whether in pro-government or
pro-opposition circles - tends to be suffused wit
h sensationalist rumour and scandal-mongering.
In spite of these scandals, it was said that all the
changes that occurred during the spring of 1994 had
affected no more than 25% of the organisation's staff.
These changes in the leadership of the SRI appear to be
part of a long-term personnel policy whose rationale is
at least hazy if we take into consideration the fact that
Magureanu dismissed allegations that the purge was
directed at the pro-Western wing of the SRI as
"hallucinations".
But those who suspect Magureanu of anti-Western feelings
seem to believe that he had close links to the KGB in the
1980s and was involved in a Soviet-backed conspiracy
against Ceausescu. Magureanu is also criticized for
cultivating special intelligence relations with Russia
and for paying frequent visits to Moscow. He has
repeatedly rejected such criticism, claiming that
cooperation between the SRI and the Russian secret
service currently focused on combating international
organized crime. In what appears to be an overreaction
to the charges made against him, Magureanu publicly
stated that the KGB had played a role in Ceausescu's
overthrow in December 1989; and he also suggested that
the KGB was the most active foreign intelligence service
in modern-day Romania.
However, the current purges within the SRI do not
necessarily signal that the uncompromised, new generation
of officers have scored a victory over the old Securitate
guard. Most new commanders of SRI divisions have
Securitate credentials, just like their predecessors.
Thus, it is possible that Magureanu's main concern was to
get rid of those former Securitate officers who might
have posed a threat to his own position. Both Diaconescu
and Cristea had long been tipped as possible successors
to the former professor of political science at the
Stefan Gheorghiu Academy, the Romanian Communist Party's
cadre school. Irrespective of the reasons for the
personnel changes, the Romanian Intelligence service will
probably continue to experience "the enemy within"
syndrome for some time, while the mood in the service
will remain "extremely tense".
UM 0215 - THE RE-BIRTH OF A POLITICAL SECRET SERVICE
One of the most controversial intelligence services
currently operating in Romania is known by the code name
UM 0215. This service, subordinated to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, was set up as a haven for officers from
the notorious political police of the communist era.
Independent media have repeatedly charged the service
with meddling in Romania's political life. Despite
strong official denials, doubt continues to surround the
service's activities, with some critics suggesting that
it might take the role of a new political force by doing
some of the "dirty tricks" for the Romanian Intelligence
Service, the country's main security structure.
UM 0215 took shape in January 1990 as the brain-child of
Gelu Voican Voiculescu, one of the most enigmatic
characters involved in the events surrounding the
overthrow of Ceausescu. During the turmoil, Voican
Voiculescu was involved in Ceausescu's trial, execution,
and secret burial as acting head, for a few days, of the
Department of State Security (DSS), which formally ceased
to exist shortly after the dictator's ouster. On 26
December 1989, Ion Iliescu, then president of the
National Salvation Front Council, ordered the transfer of
the DSS and Security Troops Command from the Internal
Affairs Ministry to the Defence Ministry, and on 30
December signed a decree stipulating the dissolution of
the DSS.
In order to reorganize the country's intelligence system,
the new authorities decided to give three months' notice
to the Securitate employees, during which period they
were expected to carry on their activities under the new
military umbrella. Voican Voiculescu, as newly appointed
deputy prime-minister, launched a campaign to
rehabilitate Securitate personnel in early 1990, which
later became an open glorification of that institution
in nationalist-communist publications such as Romania
Mare and Europa. According to some analysts, this
campaign was aimed at reactivating some segments of the
former Securitate in order to place them at the service
of a group within the nascent, postcommunist power
structures gravitating around Petre Roman, Romania's
prime minister from December 1989 to September 1991.
The first new secret service to be built on the ruins of
the Securitate seems to have been the Foreign
Intelligence Service, set up on 18 January 1990 under the
command of Major General Mihai Caraman, one of Roman's
friends and a former deputy-director, from 1972 to 1978,
of the Foreign Counter-intelligence Service. He was
later replaced in April 1992 by Ioan Talpes, a former
adviser to President Iliescu.
Also in January 1990 Voican Voiculescu began preparations
to create UM 0215 by gathering some 400 employees of the
Securitate's Directorate IV (responsible for military
counter-intelligence) and the powerful Bucharest branch
of the former securitate service. From the start, the
unit had the reputation of a political police force using
Securitate-style methods, including strict rules for
undercover operations and using code names and multiple
identities in addressing one another. Even its very
designation recalled the Securitate's practice of giving
code names for its special departments consisting of the
letters "UM" followed by four figures. Most of these
details became public only after Voican fell from grace
and was placed in diplomatic quarantine, as ambassador to
Tunis, in 1992, for allegedly knowing too much about
Romania's recent history and its protagonists.
It is said that none of all the secret services currently
operating in Romania has changed its command as often as
UM 0215. Its first head was Colonel Ion Moldoveanu, a
Securitate officer who had allegedly been in charge of
the surveillance of the Romanian dissidents. From
February 1990 to February 1993 another three former
Securitate officers were appointed and dismissed as the
head of UM 0215. Since 1993 the unit's commander has
been Major General Dan Gheorghe, who prior to 1989 was in
charge of the surveillance of foreign students living in
Bucharest. The service is currently said to employ some
1,000 officers in Bucharest and some twenty in each of
Romania's forty counties. It is reportedly made up of
two divisions. One is for counter-intelligence, which in
official jargon is termed "protection of the cadre of the
Internal Affairs Ministry". The other one is for
intelligence, which is divided into three sections:
combating hooliganism; delinquency and "parasitism" (a
term reminiscent of the Ceausescu era, largely misused
for persecuting political opponents); and economic
crimes.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: THE SECRET SERVICES' INTERFERENCE IN
POLITICS
The accusation most frequently levelled against SRI and
UM 0215 is that they have involved themselves in
political life to such a degree that they have become a
political police force. Some of these apprehensions are
rooted in the highly politicized circumstances under
which the new Romanian secret service was created.
Critics maintain that UM 0215 was set up and functioned
for more than two years as a secret service loyal to
Petre Roman's faction within the National Salvation Front
(NSF), while the SRI emerged as a kind of "personal
security service" for President Iliescu. In December
1991, in a letter attributed to a group of officers from
the Foreign Intelligence Service, UM 0215 was depicted as
Voican Voiculescu's "fiefdom" and was charged with having
continued to provide information to Roman, even after he
had ceased to be prime minister.
Growing frictions within the NSF and the party's split in
March 1992 led to the conclusion that a "true war" was
going on between the SRI and UM 0215. In the end, forces
loyal to Iliescu and the head of the SRI, Virgil
Magureanu, prevailed. As a result, Gheorghe's subsequent
appointment as head of UM 0215 was attributed by some
sources to Magureanu's personal intervention. During the
critical phase of the conflict in 1992, the SRI
repeatedly denied that there was any tension between
itself and UM 0215. But it apparently orchestrated a
series of media "revelations" about the unit's
activities, in an attempt to make the unit shoulder the
blame for most of the dark episodes in Romania's
political life in the first half of 1990.
The interference of UM 0215 in politics was by no means
limited to taking sides in the conflict between opposing
wings of the ruling party. The service proved far more
active in undermining Romania's democratic opposition,
especially in the first months after the fall of the
Ceausescu regime. Among the known actions attributed to
it are the infiltration by agents provocateurs of an
opposition rally on 18 February 1990, which turned
violent; the distribution of fake Legionary leaflets
claiming that a fascist take-over in Romania was
imminent; the selective release of documents from the
Securitate archives aimed at compromising opposition
leaders who ran in the elections of May 1990; the
infiltration of the non-stop marathon rally in
Bucharest's University Square from April to June 1990;
and direct participation in anti-opposition violence that
occurred in Bucharest on 14 and 15 June 1990, when
thousands of miners from the Jiu Valley descended on the
capital. Voican Voiculescu dismissed some of these
accusations as fabrications stemming from the SRI;
however he admitted that he had favoured the use of
Securitate files in the 1990 election campaign.
The involvement of two UM 0215 officers in the ransacking
in June 1990 of the home of Ion Ratiu, a leading figure
in the National Peasant Party-Christian Democratic
(PNT-CD) who returned to Romania in December 1989 after
spending more than 40 years in exile in Britain, was
proved in court in February 1994. The accused - former
Colonel Ion Nicolae and Sergeant Cornel Dumitrescu - were
sentenced to four and three years respectively for having
stolen $100,000 from Ratiu's house.
However, the issue of who was behind the June 1990 riots
in Bucharest is much more complicated that it appears at
first glance. Despite repeated denials by its leaders,
there are clear indications of the SRI's involvement.
Recently, Voican Voiculescu even accused Magureanu of
having staged the violence in order to take over as prime
minister. Other sources claim that the miners' arrival
in Bucharest was orchestrated by Major Dumitru Iliescu
(now a colonel), the chief of President Iliescu's Special
Guard and Protocol Unit (renamed the Protection and
Protocol Service in July 1991).
After June 1990 Internal Affairs Minister Doru Viorel
Ursu and his successor, Victor Babiuc (both close
associates of former Prime Minister Roman), are believed
to have succeeded in disciplining UM 0215. It is thought
that the unit suspended activities that might be
construed as interference in political affairs and
focused instead on tasks normally undertaken by an
internal affairs ministry.
In 1993, however, internal regulations were released that
apparently signaled a resumption of questionable,
Securitate-style practices, including the gathering of
intelligence on Romanians living, studying, or working
abroad; people with dual citizenship; employees of
foreign firms in Romania; and foreign residents. It was
also reported that the service was keeping tabs on
leaders of political parties and trade unions, political
personalities and journalists. It also revealed the
close cooperation between UM 0215 and the SRI, which
involved the former being obliged to enter immediately
all sensitive information into the SRI's computer
network. This implicitly confirms that the two services
have buried the hatchet and are now coordinating their
objectives.
Following the disclosure, the Chamber of Deputies
commission for Defence, Public Order, and National
Security summoned Gheorghe and Internal Affairs Minister
Doru Ioan Taracila to respond to the accusations. The
two defended the reputation of the service and denied
again any involvement in Romania's political life. They
conceded, however, that some employees might have
overstepped the rules; if this had happened, they added,
it was only because of behaviour "sequels" among some
officers. Taracila stressed that UM 0215 was functioning
in accordance with the National Security Law, while
Gheorghe insisted that those under surveillance - both
Romanians and foreigners - where suspected of involvement
with terrorist or criminal activities. The arguments
were accepted without reservation by Petre Roman,
currently the leader of the Democratic Party - National
Salvation Front and the chairman of the Chamber of
Deputies Commission for National Security. This position
came as a surprise in view of Roman's denouncements of
any attempt to revive the spirit and methods of the
former Securitate.
As if there were not enough secret services in Romania,
in May 1994 media announced the creation of an Operative
Surveillance and Intelligence Directorate (DSOI) within
the Internal Affairs Ministry. Colonel Traian Dima was
appointed head of the directorate, which stressed its
independence of UM 0215. The DSOI appears to focus on
police-related tasks, especially combating organized,
cross-border crime. However, as in the case of the SRI
and UM 0215, some of its powers are reminiscent of those
wielded by the communist secret police.
CONCLUSION
The present situation inside the Romanian intelligence
establishment shows to what extent the legacy of the
Securitate, one of the most brutal instruments of
repression in the former communist bloc, continues to
cast a shadow over Romania's quest for democracy and
European integration. In light of this dubious legacy,
reassuring statements such as those uttered recently by
Taracila or Magureanu on the profile and the role of the
Romanian intelligence community, may sound hollow as long
as the facts seem to contradict them.
For the time being, together with Iliescu, Magureanu is
in fact the only leading figure of the December 1989
revolt to have retained his position within the
post-communist power structure. Some analysts regard
Magureanu as the gray eminence of Romania's political
scene and warn against underestimating his influence in
the country's politics. Thus, as long as the Romanian
secret service continues to function without a clear
legal basis of budgetary allotment, and the fate of
Romania's policy is decided behind closed doors, the
enemy within will destroy Romania's fragile path to
democracy and to a new destiny.
References
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